PolitiFact – Fake story about death of Burisma ‘whistleblower’ started on site known for misinformation

The tale could have been pulled straight from a political thriller: Someone with sensitive information about the president’s family blew the whistle and was later found dead. 

“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,” said a woman in a June 15 Instagram video. She pointed to a screenshot of a post that featured photos of President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Text in the screenshot read: “Burisma Energy Accountant, Who Blew Whistle on Biden Bribery Scheme, Found Dead.” 

Not only is it not a “coincidence” — it didn’t happen. This sensational story about an informant’s suspicious death is fabricated and was previously debunked.

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(Screenshot from Instagram.)

The video’s screenshot shows an article from The People’s Voice, a site known for publishing misinformation. It was written by Baxter Dmitry, a frequent byline on misinformation sites.

The June 12 article said a chief accountant at Burisma — the Ukrainian energy company that once employed Hunter Biden — had “offered to provide US authorities with damning evidence regarding financial crimes involving Joe and Hunter Biden” but was found dead before she could testify. The article identified the so-called whistleblower as “the wife of the former Burisma owner Mykola Lisin.” 

She wasn’t named in The People’s Voice’s story, but a Lead Stories fact-check that debunked these claims in June identified Lisin’s wife as Marina Lisina. Petro Boyko, a senior partner at a Kyiv-based law firm that represented Marina Lisina in 2014, told Lead Stories that as of June 19, Marina Lisina was “alive and well” and on vacation in Greece — and that she had never been an accountant.

PolitiFact reached out to the law firm for confirmation that Lisina was still alive, but did not hear back before publication. We found noEnglish news reports that she had died, although we did find reports rebutting such claims. 

The People’s Voice story pointed to a comment by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a lawyer and ally of former President Donald Trump — during a Newsmax interview in June. Giuliani said he’d given the Justice Department “one witness … who is a woman, who is the chief accountant at this crooked company, Burisma. She was the wife of the former owner, who died under suspicious circumstances. And she was willing to give up all of the offshore bank accounts, including the Bidens,” according to Newsmax.

It is unclear, based on Giuliani’s phrasing, if he meant that the woman had died suspiciously or if he meant that Burisma’s former owner had died under such circumstances. We tried to contact Giuliani for clarification, but did not hear back. 

Lisina’s husband Mykola (also written Nikolay) Lisin died in a car crash in 2011, according to news reports. We found no evidence Marina Lisina ever worked for Burisma, and Hunter Biden did not join Burisma’s board of directors until 2014. 

Our ruling

We found nothing to substantiate claims that a Burisma accountant who planned to provide incriminating evidence on the Biden family was “found dead” before she could provide proof. 

A website known for spreading misinformation helped spread this claim.  

We rate it False.

Editor’s Note: Google Translate was used throughout the research of this story to translate websites and documents into English.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.